Category Archives: Dating

I was sick to my stomach when I walked into “Tell It!”, the First Person Arts class that I enrolled myself into 3 weeks after moving to Philadelphia. The object of the class was to help frame live storytelling with word choice, dramatic arc, and to leave your listener reassessing some aspect of life they thought they believed.

So this friend of mine is always praising the virtues of Craigslist. She likes Missed Connections and sometimes does the odd dating ad with fair to blah success. I was told recently to go on a date, which is much easier said than done in my present townage. Apparently, tattoos and such are saved for the drunk whore section of town and the fact that I don’t drink confuses the masses. The sober folks here are totally lovely… they are just 15-20 years older than me. So I did it. I took out a Craigslist ad. I sent it to a couple of my friends who had a great laugh at my expense. They decided that the facts I listed were true enough and I posted it. Then, I sat back to revel in the responses.

There was the fellow who responded with the only photograph on his work computer. He was standing in the back of his pickup truck dressed in blaze orange, holding up his newly killed buck.

There was the couple that thought I sounded fun and the wife thought she could be “into” me.

There was the guy who said he was a “one woman man” and he wanted his lady to be the same. Then I noticed the email was in response to 6 different ads.

There was the fellow that also included his photo and when I didn’t reply sent me another email that said, “WHAT?! DON’T YOU LIKE BROTHAS WIT COLOR?!!!”

There was a glitter cummerbund adorned fellow, a bare chested man with a baby sleeping on him, pot-bellied daddies resting on Fat Boys and there were a lot of red faces… I’m not sure if men in Iowa drink to make all their skin ruddy or they just haven’t figured out that you have to stop visiting the tanning bed once you’ve burned.

Sooooooo, I wrote back to the very last fellow who emailed me. He was normal looking without any outside crazy. There was no gimmick included in his shot… just a normal looking dude with curly hair. His email was longer (turns out that some had been doing this long enough that their initial email was to weed out computer programs). We emailed pleasantries a few times and then met for drinks for an hour and a half. He was fine, a little eager, but I gave him a break for nervousness. Lord knows I was. I had an extra ticket for a show the following Tuesday which I invited him to.

During the intermittent 5 days, he called/texted/emailed a little too often, but he was a nice guy about it. I just didn’t respond to everything as not to encourage the behavior. There was some joking about the PC/Mac war, some funny family talk, all pretty light.

The night of the show, he wanted me to go to his house so he could make me dinner. Ummmm no. I excused myself politely. Then he wanted me to drive to his house and he would drive us to the show. I was going to do that until I found out his house was in the wrong direction of the show. I felt weird about the house invitation (stranger danger, seriously), tried to clarify if he wanted to show me his house, that could be later, but that it didn’t make sense to the venue location. Nonetheless, he arrived right at the appointed time.

Ya know how in the early 1990’s, no one knew what to do with curly hair, permed or otherwise, so instead of learning about it, they just applied Dippity Doo gel? If that didn’t work, they applied more? Wet with a side of crunch? That was his hair. I’ve never gone out with a gel head… it was a first for me.

My father told me later that I was lucky that I was born sans olfactory organs. He looked very scrubbed and clean, but apparently, he had also been liberal with the Cool Water Cologne. Again, if a little works, more MUST be better.

So off we went in his big Ford F-250 pickup truck. LORD, I HAVE ARRIVED! Not 5 minutes into it, he brought up the Mac/PC thing for the 6th time and got real serious. Like he was gonna ‘learn me’ type serious… he warned me that the my company would not buy me a Mac for my desk and I was going to have to accept that PC’s are what the business world uses.

I was aghast.

I pointed out that I had actually never brought up the Mac/PC thing before and if he was attempting to be cute and funny on that topic YET AGAIN it wasn’t working anymore. He told me that I was taking it too seriously. Miffed, but understanding, I responded by saying ‘had I said I was a Linux user, you would have a much greater point.’ That is called ‘diffusion through humor’.

I am mad now just thinking about it.

New Topic:

I asked him if he wanted to go into the show or wait outside a little bit. He responded by saying ‘whatever you want to do.’ Which was fine once, but I got the same response three times. I finally told him I liked to run on a bipartisan platform and if I asked him his opinion, I would like it. He responded in this smarmy voice, that this was my night and whatever I wanted to do, I could do. That made my skin crawl.

I whipped out my fun-loving pack of Parliament Lights as smoking can be a great kill switch. Then, he bummed one.

During the show, I was excited to see that the Avett Brothers used an Orange amp. He patted my arm and said, ‘yes, amps do come in colors.’

You know when you are with someone and things happen and you lock into that knowing eye contact? I felt him look at me several times and I just couldn’t turn my head. I just focused on that bass, man. I would have been so happy to be at that show by myself.

The highlight of my evening with him came during one of the last songs. Avett Brothers are rousing, you can’t keep still. So I doin’ a little white girl groove in my spot when I felt something hard on my left hip bone. I looked down and he was rubbing a 1″ vertical section on my hip bone with two of his fingers. UpAndDown. UpAndDown. UpAndDown. I didn’t know what to DO! So I did nothing… nothing at all.

I stared at this guy standing down the aisle to the tune of ‘Take Me To My Happy Place’.

I moved over to clap as soon as the song was over.

We had a bit of a power struggle over my coat. He kept trying to put it on me. I kept trying to do it myself. THREE times he demanded he help me, THREE times, I demanded I be given my coat back.

He drove me home. Walked me to the door. I flipped the key and jumped through the doorway while talking to my cats and thanking him for joining me. His eyes were a bit confused. Door shut. Locked. Game Over. I finally understood what Edon meant when he said I was operating in the Deficiency Policy. Note to self: do not date sub par because you haven’t seen anyone that really appeals to you…

I thought I was sufficiently bitchy to never hear another word from him again. Yet, I received a thank you text on his drive home and an email from him at 7am that was about how he had to take his cat in to be euthanized that day. Then the last sentence, “more importantly, when do I get to see you again?”